coffee dates and other things || frerard oneshots

inside out

warning for content that may be sensitive for readers: dysphoria, cigarettes

UNEDITED

-this may be rather long and involves a series of time skips-

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Gerard impatiently sucked in a mouthful of smoke, letting it sit on his tongue before exhaling and pressing the cigarette to his lips again only to repeat the motion, this time letting the smoke swirl into his lungs with a familiar burn. Anxiety twisted his gut almost painfully, his hands shaking from adrenaline as he waited for the arrival of his best friend. 

He was perched on the front steps of his house, bouncing his knee at about a mile a minute and burning through his stash of cigarettes, still trying to figure out how the fuck he was supposed to find words for his situation.

He supposed he could just come out and say it but maybe something like this was supposed to be something he actually put thought into. 

Okay that was bullshit, he'd been thinking about this for years, it wasn't exactly something you could not think about, but because of how much he thought about it, he knew it was something that could fuck up his whole friendship. It's not that Frank was an asshole, it's just that this was something terribly personal and even worse that being gay and sometimes when you think you know someone and then it turns out there's a rather big part of them that you didn't know about it can cause a rift or be so alarming it could shatter a relationship entirely.

Maybe Gerard was being dramatic but this was overly terrifying- even worse than telling his little brother because family is family and no matter what they're kind of stuck with him. But Frank was his best friend, and perhaps the one person who's opinion mattered more than that of his little brother which was odd but they'd been through a lot together so it was understandable.

Coming out to Frank as bisexual had been easy, because Frank had come out as gay about 5 seconds beforehand, and the following negative attention had made them grow closer as they learned to defend their sexualities from assholes at school. They learned to protect each other for more than just being the token emo kids of their grade, and the mental illnesses they shared helped them understand each other better. Two years of best-friendship and the previous year of general 'hey you're pretty cool, wanna play video games?' type friendship meant that there was a lot at stake if this all blew up in Gerard's face.

And that's what he was scared of. Almost as much as he was afraid of Franks reaction.

He pulled his knees up to his chest as he stubbed out his cigarette before pulling another from the carton and putting it between his lips, more as something to do with himself than for the actual joy of smoking. He was just flicking the lighter when he heard the crunch of footsteps on loose stone and looked up to see the familiar form of his best friend making his way up the driveway.

Gerard's chest squeezed painfully and he made a dramatic show of lighting his cigarette as if to prove everything was fine and he hadn't gone through five of these already. Frank smiled upon seeing his huddled form and jogged a little to get to him faster, dropping himself down on the wooden step beside Gerard. He was so unexpectedly beautiful in that moment that Gerard almost forgot why he was there.

"Hey Gee, whats up?" He asked, tilting his head with furrowed eyebrows.  The curiosity in his expression was valid and Gerard wished he'd figured out a better way to start this conversation than a shitty text that read 'are you free to come over? i need to tell you something.'

Instead of answering like a normal person would, Gerard took a long drag of cigarette smoke and let the smoke out through his nose and mouth, effectively looking like a dragon in the process. As the smoke rose up into the dreary afternoon sky Gerard desperately scrambled for the right words, starting to think that maybe his best course of action would just be to rip the bandaid off and say it as blunt as possible.